The nation’s richest chef, Gordon Ramsay, faces a hot and sticky Christmas
this year. Everyone seems to agree that he has been a gold-plated
Michelin-starred plonker to have been caught in flagrante with a hard-faced
Welsh bird in leopardskin lingerie who describes herself as a professional
mistress and is currently hawking an unusually explicit how-to guide called
Having an Affair? A Handbook for the Other Woman.
Everyone agrees that it was unfortunate – given the sex claims that are
levelled at him in connection with this Sarah J Symonds – for him to have
waxed just a little too lyrical about his full, indeed very full, life with
his wife, Tana, in life-style features every time he has a book to promote
or a restaurant to open, which is all the time. So everyone naturally feels
the pain of Tana, the mother of his four children, who has been handed the
difficult role of Dignified Wife/Good Fairy in this lurid Yuletide pantomime.
And I do too. Feel for Tana, I mean. It must be bad enough finding out your
husband’s been unfaithful, but to have the world gorging on fare from a
classic redtop menu of headlines such as “A slapper-up meal” and “Cheat ’n’
two veg” is a made-for-TV Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare if ever there was one.
And all thanks to a woman who has repaid your husband’s furtive attentions
by, um, putting “a world-famous TV chef” into a guidebook about adultery.
For sure, if I were Tana – a bestselling cookery writer herself, remember –
I’d be creating a new, special dish of lapin bouillifor Gordon right now,
instead of one of her famous Sunday roast lunches.
I also feel for the scribbling mistress Sarah Symonds, and indeed for all
women in her uncomfortable position. (High heels, tight clothes, newly
blonded roots.) I can’t help it. Yes of course her story – as recounted in
the News of the World with plenty of precise detail about sex shops, sex
drugs, timings of couplings and so forth – is plain sleazy, even for the
most voyeuristic readers. But then, sex on the page is always dreadful. I
know of what I speak, as I’ve just had the dubious honour of being named the
2008 winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction award, established by the late Auberon
Waugh to “gently dissuade” authors from including “unconvincing,
perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in
otherwise sound literary novels”.
On Tuesday I was handed a huge plaster foot by the actor Dominic West, star of
The Wire, at a thronged burlesque champagne ceremony underwritten by the
lyricist Sir Tim Rice at the In and Out Club in St James’s Square. I was
also embraced very warmly indeed by Nancy Dell’Olio, the one-time girlfriend
(note: not mistress) of Sven-Göran Eriksson. This probably sounds quite
exciting and jolly until I explain that the accolade means I was considered
to have written the worst sex scene of the year for a passage in my
satirical novel Shire Hell.
This entry (sorry – at this stage in the proceedings, all words, passage,
entry etc, begin to echo with double entendres) worried the judges on many
levels: I compared someone’s “light fingers” to “a moth caught inside a
lampshade”, and his tongue to “a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to
miss a single drop”. Tom Fleming, deputy editor of The Literary Review, was
kind enough to say that “all the entries were equally awful . . . but Rachel
Johnson had the worst metaphors, and the worst animal metaphors”.
The only reason I bring this up, believe me, is to prove a point. Few love to
hear the sins they love to act (Pericles, Act 1, Scene 1), and sex written
down is embarrassing. Reading about other people getting it on can be plain
gross, just like witnessing others in the act (euw, get a room, too much
information and so on). So those whom the gods want to destroy, they first
make indiscreet about sex. Which brings us neatly back to Symonds, the
serial mistress. Had she put out and shut up, she would be fine. She failed
to observe, however, that the only thing men desire of their mistresses,
apart from sex on demand, is complete silence.
She has kissed and told, and lo – society will not forgive her but has flung
her into outer darkness and closed ranks around Tana Ramsay. This is not
Catholic France, where it is assumed that grown-ups will tactfully satisfy
their carnal yearnings outside the family unit, where mistresses have some
status (think of all the pavilions and châteaux bestowed on the likes of
Mesdames Maintenon and du Barry), the divorce rate is low and the rate of
spousal abuse lower. As Pierre Gag-naire, patron of Sketch restaurant, said
of the Ramsay allegations: “It would never – nevair – ’appen in France. In
France we respect privacy, but ’ere it is a game.”
In the Anglo-Saxon Protestant universe, the wife holds most of the cards.
Think of other publicly wronged wives, such as Mary Archer, Annabel
Goldsmith, Jilly Cooper, Victoria Beckham and Hillary Clinton. They all
somehow came out on top, fragrantly poised on the moral high ground. As for
Jimmy Goldsmith’s immortal line about men who marry mistresses automatically
creating a job vacancy, few mistresses ever get to find out whether or not
his quip is true. According to Jan Halper, author of Quiet Desperation: The
Truth about Successful Men, a study of 4,100 successful men showed that only
3% eventually married their lovers. Oh, and the divorce rate among those who
marry their lovers is 75%.
As for the straying chaps: well, since I last looked, Gordon Ramsay has been
voted Britain’s sexiest chef and he has had to lay on more tickets for his
Taste of Christmas show. In short, despite the roasting he has had, it is
now generally thought that the the sex claims will, as in the boost to Brand
Beckham given by Rebecca Loos, actually be good for business.
Which is why, of course, I’m interested in the odd one out: Sarah Symonds and
her apologia for the Other Woman. Let’s look at the eternal triangle from
her point of view, cast about a bit and see if we can find any goodwill this
festive season for that most thankless role of all, the mistress. THE Other
Woman’s Handbook is not yet available in Britain – although publishers have
been vying for it all week – so I will convey its main thrust to you. It
begins with the following advice: “To mistresses: Life is a negotiation, an
affair an even greater one.
To wives: Marriage is a war. To men: For many men, marriage is a war against
their longings.”
This knowing, world-weary tone is maintained throughout.
Basically, the book tells single women not to fall in love with married men;
that men are interested only in sex, not you; that a married man will not
leave his wife for you, because he loves her more than you, and that it is
you, the mistress, who will “really suffer”. It is also bitchy, honest and
not without the odd Sex and the City touch that seems to guarantee success
Stateside. I particularly liked the joke that ran: “Question: what do you
feed a woman to make her go off sex? Answer: wedding cake.” The book also
explains rather well just why so many females settle for being second best
rather than number one: Symonds argues that women are overqualified for
marriage, men underqualified, and as they get older the “dating and mating”
scene widens for men but narrows for women. “Men seem to grow older and more
distinguished (especially if they’re wealthy),” Symonds notes. “Whereas
women just seem to grow older!”
In a chapter called Single, Female, and Desperate?, she writes: “For all those
tempted to pour scorn on single unmarried women (SUWs) for embarking on a
tryst, I want you to know that we really tried to meet and date eligible
men.” The reader is invited to feel sisterly pity for SUWs who snag MMs (you
guessed – married men) on many counts, and it is hard at points not to,
especially when Symonds reminds SUWs that the man in question is not simply
using them but also stealing their child-rearing years from them “for his
own pleasure and self-gratification”.
Interestingly, considering that the writer has made a career out of getting
very close to men, she appears to hate them. A lot. She calls them “dogs”
and “lying, cheating, adulterous bastards” and shares observations such as:
“When men use the word ‘we’, they are referring to themselves and their
significant other – their dick.”
“As you listen to this tripe of him not wanting to damage the people around
him, always remember he finds it easy to hurt you constantly,” she points
out. But despite her apparent disgust for the married men women settle for,
she keeps her peer group, and, one imagines, her readership, to a very high
standard. No slimy lettuce or overripe bananas are permitted. “There should
never be anything limp or flat in the mistress’s kitchen – and that goes for
your MM too!”
Nor can an SUW welcome her lover at the door wearing velour sweatpants and
slippers because “he gets that at home”. That said, women who lay on
candles, cooking, wine and foreplay, aka “the whole pleasure package”, are
wasting their time, she warns, as he actually wants the whole dinner
performance to be over – in fact, takeaway would be better – because “all he
wants to do is have sex with you” and then go home. Sounds grim, doesn’t it?
Last week I spoke to many mistresses past and present. And Symonds’s book
pretty much checks out. “In Sydney when I was in my twenties, all the men
were married or gay, or married and gay,” says the novelist Kathy Lette,
author of To Love, Honour and Betray (Till Divorce Us Do Part). “It was
impossible to find a man who didn’t think monogamy was something you made
dining room tables out of. So you invariably found yourself, at some stage,
having an affair with a middle-aged married man.
“Of course you didn’t know he was married until you found the teething ring in
his pocket. But by that time it was too late because you were in love and
believed him when he said that his wife didn’t understand him. Which simply
means he wants you under, not standing. I thought love was in the air – but
it turned out to be the exhaust of his Meno-Porsche as he sped back to his
wife.” Another friend was a mistress twice in her twenties, once to a
well-known boulevardier, and gives a more balanced view of the
bitter-sweetness of that time. “Being a mistress is great for love
avoidance, for someone who doesn’t like intimacy and working at a marriage,”
she says. “You can be sexy for two hours, and then slump.” Then she went on:
“However, the pain of it was indescribable. Indescribable! I couldn’t
understand. If he loved me so much, why, why wasn’t he leaving his wife and
marrying me? I was young and didn’t understand about children and that men
will do anything to avoid divorce.”
I’ve always wondered whether it was possible to tell whether an elegant single
woman who always wore cashmere and diamonds and had a toy dog or two was a
mistress or not. Apparently, it is. Paddy Renouf is a top concierge and
claims to be able to spot London’s premier mistresses a mile off. While the
unromantic truth is that most mistresses, being office colleagues or
secretaries, are nothing like as glam-orous as the word suggests, Paddy
focuses on the high-end version. “I can’t give away any client secrets but
I’ll tell you how to find them. South Ken, anything Cadogan, Chel-sea . . .
but their spiritual home is Mayfair,” he tells me.
“They hang at the Blue bar in the Berkeley; Polo lounge at the West-bury. They
meet at the Georgian restaurant, Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Harvey Nicks
fifth floor (but not during half-term) and Morton’s, and their idea of a
treat is Cipriani.”
How can you tell they’re mistress-es? “Their overgroomed appearance and air of
being not quite there. Manicured. Seamed stockings. They have a look that
reveals they can only be kept women, as if on valium or some other
tranquillisers – to fill the void or numb the dull ache caused by the lie,”
Renouf explains.
“They have bought the lie, as indeed has the guy who pays the bills. That’s
the deal. The difference is that he can go home to the family. She is left
with baubles and trinkets and girlfriends to prop her up between the moments
of high.” The payback for the mistress – the baubles and trinkets – is a
subject that much concerns Symonds, too. She urges SUW to take married men
for all they can, to get them to pick up all the bills and to demand
presents. It’s worth remembering, perhaps, that Symonds was once a mistress
of Jeffrey Archer.
For her, the occasional spectacular gift is a legit quid pro quo and one the
wife should not dream of begrudging: for the fact is that a mistress makes a
married man happy, and it’s the wife who benefits from all her hard work.
While the mistress may get a trinket at Christmas, it’s the wife who has the
ring, or “commitment jewellery”, on the wedding finger of her left hand.
Julia Cole is a counsellor and the author of After the Affair. She has a
theory that an affair operates as the third leg on a stool, propping up a
shaky marriage, and, to mix the metaphors, it’s also a safety valve that
defuses tension.
“Those wives who understand that they are casualties of their husband’s
helpless ecstasy rather than the victim of his deliberate cruelty not only
prevent unnecessary divorces but gain immeasurably in self-respect, and in a
number of instances the marriage is made stronger.”
After all, it appears that mistresses perform a useful role, even in English
society. We should come to praise the mistress, not bury her.
Think of Christmas, in a few weeks. The Ramsay clan – as we know from our
assiduous study of the glossy magazines – have their four children, huge
Wandsworth crib, oodles of footie and swimming, champers, present-giving,
feasting and – it is to be hoped – forgiving. Has anyone given a thought to
what the festive season is going to be like for Sarah Symonds and all the
other single women hooked up with married men? This time last year, in
Pillow Talk, her blog for mistresses, Symonds told her readers: “An
important festive note to remember, ladies, ‘The only thing your man should
be stuffing this season is the turkey, and YOU!’ ” The bravado is
impressive, but I’m thinking cat, chardonnay, crying along to a festival of
carols from King’s, waiting for the call that never comes. So, if there are
any SUWs still reading, here’s the bottom line. He won’t leave his wife for
you. When he says he’ll call you later, he probably won’t, though you will
still hold on to the fact that he said he would. A mistress is neither for
Christmas nor for life.
I was just about to write that SUWs should give themselves the best present
ever and dump him, when – ping! – this popped into my inbox. An e-mail from
an old friend who was a mistress once. It seems to sum everything up.
“Re the Ramsay rogeree. Is there anything sadder than a 38-year-old woman
waiting for the married man to leave his wife? And why are there so many of
them? If my husband got one I’d invite her for Christmas, as I was there
once and I know how bloody lonely she’d be. Plus I wouldn’t waste time in
the bedroom with a man who can cook.”
So if anyone wants to invite Sarah (who describes herself as “technically
single”) for Christmas, I’m sure she’d be thrilled. Unlike the Ramsays and
all the married men that fill the world, she’s more than available.
